Tag: Latest news on Russia's war in Ukraine

Western officials believe Russia has already lost the war because it failed in its primary aim of subjugating Ukraine, arguing that Ukraine’s battlefield progress is not a measure of its overall success.

Speaking in a briefing on Wednesday, the officials conceded that Ukraine’s progress had been incremental and slower than anticipated two months ago, due to Russia’s well-prepared defenses, but said that Moscow had already lost regardless of battles over territory.

“This could be a very long struggle over territory, but in terms of the war and what Russia was looking to achieve, Russia has lost and Russia is a diminished power and is on a diminishing trajectory,” one official said. 

“This notion that somehow Russia can win even if it retains the territory that it’s got, and that is victory, is insane when Russia has strengthened NATO, has grown it with the likes of Finland and Sweden, has put Ukraine on a path to joining NATO, and has put Ukraine on a path to potentially joining the EU,” the official added. 

“I think if you’re Putin, you’re basically gambling that Donald Trump wins the next election and that is quite a long phase. It’s a long way away. In the meantime, the Prigozhin mutiny wouldn’t have happened if the war was going well in Ukraine,” another official said.

Some context: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted Saturday that Kyiv’s counteroffensive is moving forward, after troops made some headway in its campaign to recapture territory seized by Russia.

On Friday, Ukrainian forces said they had penetrated the “first line” of Russian strongholds in the Zaporizhzhia region, in a sign that Kyiv is edging closer to Moscow’s sprawling network of fortified trenches along the southern front.

Overall, Ukrainian gains have been hard won after its counteroffensive formally got underway in mid-June. There have been no captures of major settlements as Kyiv’s troops encounter well-defended Russian lines.

The lives of Ukrainian children and teens have been utterly upended by Russia’s invasion of their country. When the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in March, the foremost charge against him was over an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russian detention centers.

CNN spoke with Ukrainian teenagers in Kyiv who claim they had been forcibly deported to Russia before being found and brought home by family members. Their return was made possible by Save Ukraine, an organization working to return deported children to their families.

Motychak was told by Russian guards that “the buses were too expensive.” And so she remained in the center during Christmas 2022 and into the beginning of the year – and she said she was only granted access to basic necessities if she performed acts of Russian patriotism.

“There were some secondhand clothing and hygiene products delivered for us. So when we asked for these, they said, ‘Whoever doesn’t like Russia doesn’t like me and isn’t going to get these things.’”

Motychak said she was able to speak to her mother on the phone once a week. Her mother contacted a volunteer working to bring detained Ukrainian children home. Together, they were able to travel to Crimea in February and bring Motychak home, along with other teens she had been detained with.

This week, Kyiv opened more than 3,000 criminal cases over Russia’s alleged crimes against children in the country, including dozens of torture cases, Ukrainian prosecutors said Thursday. Russia has repeatedly denied these accusations of torture and human rights abuses.

In July, Moscow authorities claimed some 700,000 children had been brought into Russian custody since the war began. The Russian government has defended the practice, saying they are saving the children and denying that the deportations are forced. Ukraine however, claims the children were illegally deported and that a much smaller number of children have been taken – an estimated 19,500.

CNN also spoke with Ksenia Koldin, 19, who helped retrieve her 12-year-old brother from a Russian detention center. Having been separated for months, Koldin said the reunion was tough, since she could see that her brother had been “tormented.”

“Not only had there been almost a thousand kilometers between us and we didn’t see each other for nine months – we’d also grown apart because of the psychological pressure put on him,” she said.

During his detention, Koldin said her brother had been shown Russian propaganda, making him doubt his own country and reluctant to return home. Koldin said that, with the help of a volunteer, she had been able to convince her brother to leave the center and come back with her.

Watch more here:

Members of the BRICS economic group of major emerging economies are meeting this week in South Africa for a summit that could determine the future of the bloc — and how hard it pushes back against a world order it sees as unfairly dominated by the West.

The group of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa has never been more prominent on the world stage. But the BRICS themselves are complicated.

Russia’s leader can’t attend the summit because host country South Africa would be obliged to arrest him for alleged war crimes. Two other members, India and China, have a simmering border conflict. And while Beijing is locked in a rivalry with the United States, New Delhi has close ties with Washington.

It’s not the happiest of families. But nonetheless that family is now entertaining formal bids from nearly two dozen countries to join their bloc of major emerging economies.

Discussions around adding new members are expected to figure high on the agenda of the three-day summit beginning Tuesday, where BRICS leaders — with the exception of Russia’s Vladimir Putin — will gather in-person for the first time since the pandemic.

Putin, who has an International Criminal Court warrant out for his arrest linked to his brutal invasion of Ukraine, will attend virtually.

At stake in decisions around expanding is the direction and identity of the group, whose members aim for more say in an international system they see as favoring the West and Group of Seven (G7) nations, despite a shift in who dominates the global economy over recent decades.

Read the full analysis here.

Ukraine is exploring ways to help merchant vessels acquire insurance for operating in the Black Sea, in the wake of the collapse of the UN-brokered Grain Initiative.

Oleksandr Hryban, an adviser to the Economy Minister, said the government was considering launching its own international insurance pool, which would be coordinated with an international institution or with other governments.

“The goal is the same – to mobilise the reinsurance market, which is then multiplied, turning a nominal billion dollars into 5 billion in insurance coverage. This is currently being tested as a pilot on the grain deal,” Hryban said.

The withdrawal of Russia from the Grain Deal negotiated by Turkey and the United Nations has had a chilling effect on merchant shipping using the three Ukrainian Black Sea ports from which most grain is exported. Russia has warned that ships leaving these ports may come under attack.

Ukraine has since created its own maritime corridor for shipping, but is unable to guarantee its safety because if Russian naval superiority in the Black Sea. It was first used last week by a container ship that reached Turkish waters without incident.

“There is a direct threat from the Russian navy, fueled by constant threats from the Kremlin,” Hryban said. 

“We are now actively working with the international insurance community to create a mechanism where these funds will be used not directly by ship owners, but by insurance companies that will multiply this resource,” Hryban was quoted as telling state news agency Ukrinform.

“The Ministry of Reconstruction, the Ministry of Economy, and underwriters such as Lloyds and Marsh & McLennan and other leading insurance and reinsurance brokers are involved in its approval.”

In an interview with the Financial Times, Hryban said the scheme could be in place as early as next month, and could see between five and 30 ships covered to travel through what he described as the “danger spot” of Ukrainian waters.

The FT also quoted Marcus Baker, head of marine, cargo and logistics at Marsh, as saying that “a public-private partnership, with insurers working in tandem with the Ukrainian government, will give greater confidence to shipowners to return to delivering Ukrainian grain around the world to those countries that need it most.”

The Hungarian government has refuted claims that it has denied Ukraine’s diplomats access to 11 soldiers who were held as prisoners of war (POWs) by Russia before being moved to Hungary earlier this month. 

Zoltán Kovács, Hungary’s state secretary for international communication, told CNN that the soldiers had been “freed in Russia” after the cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta and “were able to declare, out of their own free will, that they wished to come to Hungary.”

Kovács said that most of the soldiers also had Hungarian citizenship, and the rest had, “received refugee status in Hungary.” 

They are now “free individuals” who “can stay in Hungary or can leave Hungary at any time out of their own free will,” he added.  

The soldiers’ transfer to Hungary was first reported on June 8, when the office of the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, announced that, “a group of Ukrainian war prisoners of Transcarpathian origin who had participated in hostilities [had been] transferred to Hungary” that day under an agreement the Church had mediated. 

On June 9, Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, welcomed the soldiers’ release but said Kyiv had not been informed about the negotiations leading to it and requested its consul be granted immediate access. 

Today, June 19, Nikolenko claimed that the soldiers were being, “kept in isolation, do not have access to open sources of information, their communication with relatives takes place in the presence of third parties, [and] they are denied the right to establish contact with the Embassy of Ukraine.” 

Kovács denied this and said, “The Hungarian government is not following or monitoring their movements any further.” 

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it has arrested two men in connection with foiled attacks on Russian nuclear power plants earlier this month, state news agency TASS reported. 

The FSB alleges the attacks were planned at nuclear power stations in the Leningrad and Tver regions ahead of Russia’s May 9 Victory Day celebrations, TASS reported. 

The TASS report claimed the planned attacks were organized by the Foreign Intelligence Services of Ukraine. 

The FSB named the two men arrested as Maystruk Alexander and Usatenko Eduard. A third man, Kishchak Yuriy, is also wanted in connection with the alleged plot, TASS said.

The report did not state when the arrests were made.

Some background: Russia holds an annual military parade on May 9 marking the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II.

In the run up to Victory Day this year, the Kremlin was targeted in an alleged drone attack. US officials have picked up chatter among Ukrainian officials blaming each other for the drone attack, contributing to a US assessment that a Ukrainian group may have been responsible, sources familiar with US intelligence have told CNN.